


Tonight I'm Really Living

by Kyla_Wren



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: DrummerWolf, F/M, spooky summer nights, traditional clairvoyant Amanda Brotzman, traditional vampire Rowdy 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyla_Wren/pseuds/Kyla_Wren
Summary: listen to Marlon Williams'Vampire Again.





	Tonight I'm Really Living

**Author's Note:**

> listen to Marlon Williams' _Vampire Again_.

Martin dragged a thumb over his fangs and examined the blood left behind.

 

That one had tasted good - like malice and stupidity. Sweet on the tongue. One who would think again before following strangers, if it ever woke up in the gravel lot where Martin and his brothers had left it.

 

He looked over at his assembled kinfolk, silent and watchful.They weighed down the power line on which they balanced no more than a row of birds might. Their bones were light. Their hearts were dry and still.

 

For years and years, they had been. But now...

 

Martin had felt his own heart stir and quicken tonight. An echo of years past, when he was still mortal and felt anything besides the drive to protect his own and to stay forever on the run.

 

A car passed on the road below, headlights throwing their silhouettes into sharp relief for one brief, blinding moment of false daylight. He nodded at his brothers.

 

One, two, three, four - they dropped like cats to the waiting street, soundless masses of shadow.

  
  


He was on the sidewalk outside her house.

 

Him, and his friends. She knew it before she looked. Amanda just knew things, sometimes - before they happened or concurrently. 

 

She looked out at the suburban cul-de-sac, transformed by night and summer fog into a place set apart from time and space. Streetlights shone yellow on the wet pavement, throwing gold into his pale hair and catching the smoke from his cigarette.

 

She met his eyes. His mouth moved, and she could hear his voice in her head, through the glass, soft and rough at once.

 

“Open your window,” he said.

 

“Invite Us In,” said the big one.

 

“We just wanna play,” said the short one.

 

“We play real nice,” said the tall one.

 

“No.” She shut the curtains. “Fuck off.”

  
  
  


The next night they were back.

 

“Hey,” she said again, out her window, propped open this time, “I said, fuck off.”

 

The blonde one blew smoke with an inscrutable face, his glasses opaque with mist. His lighter clicked on and off, casting light under his two-toned beard.

 

“We’ll leave if you really want us to,” he said, out loud this time.  _ Do you? _

 

She laughed and left to wash her face. She kept the window open. They did not come in, though she felt them brush by the blowing curtains. She dreamed of silver rings and pale eyes covered by fog.

 

Two nights ago she had made a mistake. Or two, or three. 

 

One was even being there in the first place. Amanda almost never left the house, and if she did, she kept herself facing inward. These days, illness and sadness and fear made a blanket that she wore wrapped around her always. But her brother had insisted, in the sweet way he did sometimes, that she try to go out - that she try to enjoy herself in a bar full of red light and shadows and curling smoke, where the music was so loud it registered as a violent shaking of her ribs. A place she would have liked, in years past. Before her heart turned to dust.

 

She pushed through the crowd, slow and sticky like a dream. When she slid by the pool table, four sets of eyes turned to follow her. 

 

The palest belonged to a blonde who burned candle-bright in the corner, leaning on his cue and holding an untouched whiskey.

 

She caught his gaze and held it.

 

“Evenin’,” His lip curled, revealing sharp points.

 

“Hey,” she whispered, and knew somehow he could hear her through the pulsing noise. Speaking to him - her second mistake.

 

“Buy you a drink?”

 

“Sure.” She never blinked, she held and held like letting go was impossible. He sank backwards into the crowd until it swallowed him up. A pool cue struck a ball beside her, making her flinch. The shadows that made up his companions resumed their game, murmuring and looking at her with tilted heads, like curious crows.

 

He reappeared before she expected it, handing her a beer. Not the kind of drink she thought he’d bring, but she was glad.

 

Now it was harder to look at him, harder to focus. He’d retreated behind some sort of glimmering mask. Ever shifting, dancing away from her just so. It was like that sometimes, with these kinds of people. The ones who weren’t altogether human anymore.

 

“Name’s Martin. What’s yours?”

 

She wasn’t all the way stupid. You don’t give them your real name. Names have power.

 

“Drummer,” she said, easy as pie. A nickname from school. Still too close, maybe. Her third mistake.

 

“ _ Drummer girl _ ,” his voice was light, half a laugh. “You in a band?”

 

“Not anymore.” She took a sip to tilt back her head and hide the little wince of pain.

 

“I bet you taste sad and sweet,” he said, and his voice was no longer teasing. He looked sorrowful, and for a moment the fae glamour faded off his skin and a lost creature showed its shadowed eyes to her. Her heart stuttered.

 

Her  _ heart _ . So long slumbering, she barely remembered its beat.

 

She turned and left, though all of her was screaming to turn back and stay.

 

It was a hurried walk home, full of fears real and imagined. For a short while she thought she might be being followed - by a mortal man, with his own bad intentions - but that feeling vanished when he was plucked off the street behind her and smothered in dark beating wings and bright jaws. 

 

And now - it was three nights later. The blonde creature was outside again, with his companions, watching, waiting, guarding. She waited until she saw his head turn to speak, then slipped out the door to the back garden.

  
  


“We’ve never stayed so long before. Same place, nearly a week?” the tall one twitched and scratched his neck.

 

“Trust me, Cross,” Martin breathed. “We’ll be goin’ soon, with or without her.”

 

“With me?” The Drummer girl materialized on the wet street.

 

“You came outside.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Ain’t you scared of strangers like us?”

 

“Aren’t you scared of a stranger like me?” She raised her eyebrows.

 

The vampires laughed. 

 

She left with them.

  
  



End file.
